Technical Issues "Join Timeout" and "Connection Lost" errors

My friend and I are running rFactor 1 v1.255, we're literally running the same exact files in terms of mods , tracks, etc.
All we want to do is drift with each other, we've both tried creating our own sessions as well as joining the dedicated drift servers who are running the Project D 2.0 Race series.

We've tried connecting direct by IP, we've attempted using Hamachi (only because I remember it working in my Starcraft days).
Whenever we try to create our own session and join I get a "Join Time out" message. Whenever I try to connect to the dedicated server I get in, race starts and about 2 seconds into the session I get "connection lost"

only thing we've changed in the multiplayer.ini file is the concurrent server line, only so we can see each other's sessions when we've attempted to join each other.

We both tried turning off our Windows firewall completely, both running Windows 7 and we turned off any anti-virus.